Many modern debates about "women's status in Islam" focus on topics such as polygamy, the veil, and a few verses from the Islamic holy book, the Qur'an, that seem to impose female subordination -- to men in general and husbands in particular.

Saudi Arabia is in the throes of a crisis. Its population is growing faster than its economy, its welfare state is rapidly deteriorating, regional and sectarian resentments are rising, and the disaffected are increasingly turning to radical Islamic activism.

(August 26, 2004) WIDE ANGLE explores the ban on Muslim headscarves in French schools in the town of Dammarie-les-Lys, a racially diverse, working-class community on the outskirts of Paris, where young Muslim women face a choice to obey the ban - or flout it.

Since 1989, the appearance of the hijab (Muslim headscarf) in French public schools has opened the most impassioned debate over the role of laïcité (secularism) in French society since the separation of church and state in 1905.

(July 17, 2003) WIDE ANGLE follows Salman Ahmed as he journeys to the tolerant, ancient city of Lahore and the fundamentalist stronghold of Peshawar to reveal the internal religious and political conflicts of nuclear-armed Pakistan.